Roast Satan (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Roast Satan |
| Country of production | Federal Republic of Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1976 |
| length | 112 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
| script | Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
| production | Albatros Production made by Trio Film |
| music | Peer ravens |
| camera |
Jürgen Jürges (1975) Michael Ballhaus (1976) |
| cut | Thea Eymèsz , Gabi Eichel |
| occupation | |
| |
Satansbraten is a grotesque film by the German director, author and actor Rainer Werner Fassbinder . It is his 26th feature film in eight years. He tells of the creative crisis of a formerly successful left-wing author who suddenly thinks he is Stefan George and likes right-wing extremist views. The shooting in Munich took place in two parts: 14 days in October 1975 and 15 days in January / February 1976. The costs amounted to approx. 600,000 DM . The premiere of the film took place on October 7, 1976 at the Mannheim Film Week ; the cinema release was in November 1976.
action
The poet Walter Kranz and his pragmatic wife Luise live with Walter's mentally ill brother Ernst. You have money problems because the formerly successful “poet of the revolution” has not written anything for two years. His account is far overdrawn, his publisher no longer gives him an advance and he has already accumulated too many debts with his friends Lisa and Rolf. Only Walter's lover, Irmgard von Witzleben, who likes to play his slave, writes him a check - but he shoots her while playing the slave.
Walter comes up with the idea of writing about a prostitute and receives Lana von Meyerbeer for an interview. But he finds it easier to sleep with her than to ask good questions. His wife watches and complains because he hasn't slept with her for a while. His brother Ernst is mainly busy expanding his collection of dead flies. When the police asked Walter for an alibi, the seized furniture was being picked up from the apartment. Because it has become so uncomfortable at home, Walter prefers to stay with his girlfriend Lisa - with her husband's prior approval. Lisa also agrees to witness his alibi.
To raise money, he sends his admirer Andrée, who has written him letters for years, to come. She happily moves in with Walter, Luise and Ernst. Andrée makes her savings available, is completely devoted to Walter and lets herself be humiliated again and again. She even accepts that Ernst rapes her in the coal cellar at the suggestion of his brother Walter.
When Walter writes a beautiful poem, his wife quickly reveals it to be the work of Stefan George . Walter then had Andrée's money tailor a turn-of-the-century suit, put on a wig and, like George, reads his texts to a small group. He identifies himself more and more with George, only his appearance bothered him: Luise made him aware that he is quite fat for Stefan George.
When Andrée's savings run out, Walter's audience never returns because he paid them to attend his lectures. Aside from Andrée, the only real listener left is Urs, a disciple who at least brings Walter's brother Ernst in. When Luise tells him that he couldn't be George because he was gay, Walter tries to get in touch with a prostitute . When the sexual contact did not work out and the male prostitute was unable to assist with his readings, Walter declared Stefan George dead. But he liked the fascistoid worldview of the strong and the weak so much that he made fun of it, To show Lisa and Rolf Andrée's submissiveness.
The lack of money drives Walter to visit his poor parents again after years. He manages to relieve them of the funeral savings with a story. Andrée, who follows Walter every step of the way, is stunned at the sight of her parents' house and begins to doubt him. He had told her about wealthy, educated parents.
Soon it hangs on his lips again, because Walter's creative crisis is over: he is writing again and can now read Andreé and the two disciples his own texts. However, he still lacks money. That's why he surprises the prostitute Lana in her private apartment. When he realizes that she is married, he extorts her savings. But he did not expect Lana's protectors and is beaten up in front of Andrée. When Walter, still lying on the floor, smiles, Andrée thinks he is weak and completely falls away from believing in him.
Walter doesn't care, because he has made it: His book “No celebration for the Führer’s dead dog” is finished and the publisher is satisfied: It is now “no longer a cramped left kitsch”, but has “power” and “size ". He suggests the advertising slogan: “An epic from the lowlands and sewers of human existence”. Everything could be fine, but when Walter comes home his wife has been hospitalized. Walter had never paid attention to Luise's appearance or the remarks about her health. When he arrives at the hospital with his two remaining disciples, Luise has already passed away. Theatrically he collapses and thus disappoints his two disciples, whom he had always sworn to be strong .
He declares everything to be acting to the doctor. When the doctor found out about his new work, he called Walter lucky and made him smile. Walter now wants to get rid of his brother and accuse Ernst of the murder of Irmgard with the police. He has Ernst get the pistol out of hiding - and is shot by him while talking to the police. When the doorbell rings, the police are standing in front of the door with Irmgard. With a bucket of cold water they let Walter stand up again, who asks them irritated: "Is that paradise?"
Motto of the film
The film begins with a quote from Antonin Artaud , to whom Fassbinder also dedicated his film Despair - A Journey into Light a year and a half later :
"Ce qui différence / le paiens de nous / c´est qu´à l´origine / de toutes leurs croyances / il ya un terrible effort / pour ne pas penser en hommes, / pour garder le contact / avec la création entière / c ´est-à-dire la divinité. “( What distinguishes the heathen from us is the effort made at the origin of all their forms of belief not to think in terms of man, in order to establish a connection with the whole of creation, that is, with the Godhead received. )
Fassbinder on his film
“This is an attempt that has to do with many of the things I have to do with, very private; which has something to do with my attitude when I read the newspaper, what attitude I develop towards certain things, or when I talk to people who still talk as if it was still 1968, and what happens to me then, what for Aggression arises in me, so that sometimes I want to say, “ These assholes, that can just be shit if these idiots are still attached to it or as attached to it as they do, so mindlessly and without having learned anything. “Well, what kind of aggression I get and how I overcome it again because I tell myself that this is the right way. From this muddle of emotions and thoughts, I try to tell a clear story. "
Reviews
"The tone is extremely irritated, exaggerated, screeching, wrong, bitchy and affected, the text is over-the-top, puffy and stilted, and the actions are absurd, perverse and unbelievable"
“The most furious attack against Fassbinder came from himself: Satansbraten described“ a corner of me, exaggerated into the grotesque ”. (...) The self-styling of a poet who thinks himself to be ingenious and has a pronounced master-man ideology is staged in a rude and difficult-to-consume manner . (...) Roast Satan is a document of the crisis, a scornful and merciless self-criticism. ' Private suffering published in a mass medium ' (Hans-Dieter Seidel, Stuttgarter Zeitung , February 11, 1977), comments on the criticism, which at least recognized that it was not only about Fassbinder's trauma, but also ' about the paralyzing resignation of a sleep-inducing person Spiritual life in which so many hopes have sunk '(Peter Buchka, Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 26, 1976). "
“The courage of desperation drives the intellectual Walter beyond the brink of crime. In others - whether his wife, his brother, Lisa, Lana or Irmgart - he sees only cogs in his own selfish gears. A few years after the revolt there is nothing of revolt. At most, someone will revolt against the fact that others might forget him - and Walter ends up 'velvety' in a washed-out, primitive right-wing ideology, which does not really want to work either - unless it is for a select audience that does it quickly reinterprets the left delusion, which has become boring, into a right one. Plastic and drastic, cynical and without scruples, Fassbinder shows us a 'community' that had once set up to expose the wrong and mendacious, the unjust and degenerate of a society, to insist on practicing freedom - and that in its own arrogance and vanity seems to end. "
“Walter in particular, but God knows not only he, rages through this ' cruel, exaggerated satire on the opportunism of the culture industry and the narcissism of artists ' ( Thomas Elsaesser , 2001), with which the critics could do little more than projecting his statements onto Fassbinder himself and his surroundings, which in no way does the film justice. "
“A robbery staged as a sado-maso act immediately establishes the inseparable connection between sex, money and power, which Fassbinder often talks about and which comes across as particularly brutal in the guise of a comedy. Regardless of melodramatic feelings, the characters are allowed to attack each other in their barter deals, instinctively regressive and coldly calculating at the same time, as selfish as self-destructive, horny and exploitative and without any real interest in each other. (...)
Wickedness on all sides, against everything and everyone. Fassbinder's only comedy is also perhaps his most misanthropic film, the cinematic equivalent of a torrent of vomit. There is very little in Satan's Roast that creates the slightest hint of empathy - Kranz 'gradually declining wife Luise ( Helen Vita ) is a small exception , at least at the end of the film, when her furious curses give way to silent sadness. One finds sympathy above all for the bursting energy of all those involved, an ensemble standing under full steam around the furious acting Kurt Raab, whose wild demeanor is a pleasure to watch and listen to - even if it is good for laughing for a maximum of twenty minutes and then more stress symptoms caused. And one has admiration for the will to form, which Fassbinder suddenly slows down in the middle of the shabby chaos in order to stage a drama sequence with Raab and Ingrid Caven in a glamorous villa on the lake as literally "big cinema" with orchestral music and a luxurious camera . (...)
Above all, there is the central strand around Kranz's alter ego . The fact that Fassbinder lets the ex-revolutionary with costume and wig slip into the role of arch reactionary Stefan George is also a caustic political punchline - but not only that. Like Kranz in the midst of everyday life, a grotesque imitation of the elite George circle on the Setting legs, that also tells of the attempt at artistic self-empowerment under the most adverse circumstances. If one can assume that Fassbinder was fascinated by George's artistic will as well as by his theatrical self-staging in a circle of an absolutely subordinate following, and if one sees how unrestrained he simultaneously exposes such an appearance in Satan's roast to total ridicule: Then one understands, who was the first and last target of the bitter and cynical attacks of this so-called comedy. "
Theater adaptations
- Satansbraten Münchener Kammerspiele (2012) - Director: Stefan Pucher ( Memento from October 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
"Stefan Pucher now beams it just as over the top - just a little less caustic and culturally critical due to the lack of a time-nerve hit - from the celluloid to the stage at the Münchner Kammerspiele: cinema theater, almost one to one, congenially furnished by Stéphane Laimé (stage) and Tina Kloempken (costumes) . (...) Brigitte Hobmeier as Margit Carstensen's revenant looks exactly like this. What a disguise! The way she grumbling and pushing her teeth forward - you can hardly recognize her. It is viciously comical how excessively this woman practices genius cult (...). Brigitte Hobmeier plays it colossally well - and is all the more striking when, in contrast, she gives Kranz's lascivious and sophisticated lover Lisa and in this Ingrid Caven role can demonstrate all her diva-like eroticism and Fassbinder women suitability.
Happy the theater that has such actors! (...) Just as the protagonist Kranz imitates Stefan George , who in turn took over his poem “Albatros” from Baudelaire , Pucher now covers the Fassbinder film. Let's take it as a cultural technique, and what it does here above all is a lot of fun.
Because the transfer to the smart, variable stage set works great. And technically, too, the evening with its many live shoots in front of and behind the scenes is terrific. It's got the speed and timing and the crude happy ending of the original. After Martin Kušej's success with “The bitter tears of Petra von Kant” in the Marstall ( SZ of March 5, 2012), Pucher's “Satansbraten” is further proof that Fassbinder's fabrics are still igniting. At least in Munich, where the Fassbinder Revival on the 30th anniversary of the artist's death can be considered a success. "
literature
- Nicolas Detering: " Roast Satans . Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Comedy about Stefan George (1976)". In: George yearbook. Edited by Wolfgang Braungart and Ute Oelmann on behalf of the Stefan George Society. Vol. 12 (2018/2019). Berlin, Boston: de Gruyter, pp. 181-214.
Web links
- Satansbraten in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Roast Satans , film and background information, Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation, Berlin
- Roast Satans at filmportal.de
- Roast Satans at Kino.de
- Is that paradise? Detailed film review by Ulrich Behrens on Filmzentrale.com, 2004
- Sex, Murder, Art and Many Dead Flies Film review by Maurice Lahde on Critic.de, 2012
- Satansbraten -Trailer at New-Video.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Rainer Werner Fassbinder retrospective program , Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation (Ed.), Berlin, 1992
- ↑ When I'm not working - I don't even know how it is , interview with Wolfram Schütte, Frankfurter Rundschau , January 31, 1976
- ↑ Peter W. Jansen: Cinema notes. In: epd Church and Film, October 1976. Quoted from: Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Michael Töteberg, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek, 2002, ISBN 3-499-50458-8
- ^ Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Michael Töteberg, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek, 2002, ISBN 3-499-50458-8
- ↑ Is that paradise? Ulrich Behrens, quoted from: Filmzentrale.com, 2004
- ↑ Sex, murder, art and many dead flies Maurice Lahde, Critic.de, 2012
- ↑ Genius and Copy Christine Dössel, Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 16, 2012.
- ↑ Genius and Copy - Fassbinder's "Satansbraten" at the Kammerspiele , Christine Dössel, Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 16, 2012